Teaching Life Writing

Orly Lael Netzer is Assistant Professor (teaching stream) at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She is scholar of autobiography, cultural, and memory studies. Her research explores the ways that audiences are invited to bear witness to difficult knowledge in autobiographical literature and art to better understand how relations between communities are shaped by the ways we listen and respond to each other’s stories of protest.Amanda Spallacci is Lecturer in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, where she received her PhD (‘21). Her research publications centre on survivor/victim representations of sexual assault across various media, including memoir, television, film, and social media, that she critically engages with through frameworks including but not limited to memory studies, affect theory, trauma theory, and feminist print culture studies. Her most recent work is a forthcoming edited book collection on digital memory cultures in Canada (2024).

• Foreword: Life-Writing Research beyond “The Black Hole” Effect Introduction: On Teaching Life Writing in an Age of Social Change Part 1—Teaching Life Writing Forum: The Process 1. Teaching Black Life Writing in the 2020 US Election Season and Beyond Part 2—Teaching Life Writing Forum: Materials 2. Scraps and Maps: Handwriting and Drawing as Early-Stage Process Methods for Autobiography 3. “Show and Tell”: The Risks and Rewards of Personal-Object-Based Learning 4. Grasping the Scope of Individual Human Devastation in War: Life Writing’s Place in Mapping in the Classroom 5. Teaching, Trauma, Writing: The Truth’s Superb Surprise 6. Care-Filled Classrooms: Heart(Art)Full Life Writing Pedagogy Part 3—Teaching Life Writing Forum: Mediations 7. Interview Mediations in the Classroom 8. Translation as/and Mediation: Teaching Life Writing in the Foreign Literature Classroom 9. Getting Emotional, Getting Personal. Writing Autobiographically about Teaching Life Writing in Times of Crisis 10. On Teaching Life Writing for (Not) Knowing Part 4—Teaching Life Writing Forum: Practices 11. Living Archives, Living Story: Questions of Ethics, Responsibility, and Sharing 12. (Life) Writing to Belong: Teaching and Learning on Camera during a Pandemic 13. Designing an Accessible Virtual Classroom: Cripping the Syllabus 14. The Art of Life Storytelling: Sharing and Exchanging Moments of Ambition in Summer Bridge Programs Afterword: History and Hopes—Life writing Pedagogy in the twenty-first Century